The Status of IP Phones

The good news for anyone who has invested in a slick new IP phone system recently is, the rumours are not true. IP phones are not a thing of the past. In fact, this market is growing and is predicted to continue to grow over the next 10 years at a slow but steady pace.

The good news for anyone who still has an old style analogue phone system is, you’re not too late, now is the time to upgrade. Join all the early adopters now and you will never look back.

Frost and Sullivan have estimated that 22% of IP desktop phone shipments in 2014 were deployed in the hosted/cloud space, this figure is expected to reach 55% by 2021. In addition to this, there has also been a huge growth in IP Media Phones which Frost and Sullivan define as;

“ …advanced IP desktop phones equipped with larger displays and either integrated or plugged cameras to enable personal video communication, as well as provide support for advanced telephony and UC features and integrated business applications.”

This is thanks in part to their increased capabilities to combine with Unified Communications or UCaaS. While it is mostly positive for IP Phones, we cannot deny the shift towards, Unified Communications, mobile phones softphones etc. creating less of a need for a deskphone, the F&S article does go on to read;

“Frost & Sullivan estimates that in 2014 there were around 47.7 million active UC clients in use by business end users. However, most of these clients are still used in conjunction with IP desktop phones. Thus, while communications usage is shifting towards PC and intelligent mobile clients, IP desktop phones are still a viable alternative at the desk. We might not be using them as much as we used to in the past, but they are still there when we are at the desk. We believe that, over the coming years, there will still be a prime time for each type of endpoint, including desktop phone devices, depending on the workers’ situation, location and time of the day.”